August 23, 2008

Pitamakan Pass: The Scariest Hike Ever.

My sister visited last week and we decided to camp for a couple of nights in Glacier National Park. She wanted to do a major hike, so the three of us decided to try a nineteen mile loop that we'd read about in one of my day hike books. The hike leaves from Two Medicine Campground, one of the most beautiful spots in the park if you ask me.

Here we are at Dawson Pass. That's me on the left, and my sister, Kari on the right. We're feeling happy. The altitude here is about 7800 feet and the view is beautiful.

We're happy because we don't yet know that we have to scramble along that loose rock for the next three miles, climbing another 500 feet along the way. In freezing temperatures and 30 mph winds. With not even 12 inches of shoulder on the trail to catch you if you stumble. And you do, because the shale easily breaks under the weight of your feet. That's the left, top side of this mountain, which not one of us took a picture of, not even me.

It seemed to go on forever. Just when we thought we were approaching that pass, the trail would switch and we'd have to go another mile. By the time we reached Pitamakan, we'd rounded three peaks on that crappy trail. I prayed to Jesus the entire time, and I'm not kidding about that.

The beautiful vistas on our descent didn't make an impression at all. The three of us had one thought: DOWN.

And to make it back to Two Medicine by dusk, we had to hustle it. Ten miles at a killer pace with very little emotional energy left in the group.

But we did it. Mike says he checked it out on Google Earth and that "I'll be impressed with what I've done when I see the height of that mountain" as much as I want to feel like a bad ass for doing 19 miles up and down
five months after major surgery...the victory feeling just ain't there.

Hiking that rock face was the scariest thing I've ever done. It was
scarier than the black bear that we didn't see until we were ON HIM at mile 18. We were so focused on getting back to the truck that we never saw him until [could have been] too late. We're just lucky there are still plenty of berries out there.

Well, the vistas did make SOME impression, it's just that we were too focused on completing our dumb-ass mission to admire it the way it deserved. I'm still glad we did the hike, but it would have changed things had we known about that creepy north face part... We're bad ass mountain goats, man. We did it. Man against nature and all that.